2018-19 Great Performers Season Preview

British orchestras and chamber music are the focus of Great Performers.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to New York next year to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Photo © Philharmonia Orchestra.

When Lincoln Center was established as New York's mecca for the performing arts, it became home to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet. However, it soon became apparent that there was need for an in-house performing arts series, inviting international orchestras and soloists from around the globe. The Great Performers series is no longer the flagship it once was, but it still provides the opportunity to hear international orchestras in a posh setting.

Opera Review: They Can't Dance

Les Arts Florissants revives Rameau's Platée.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Les Arts Florissants. That's William Christie in the lower right.
Photo by Guy Vivien © 2013 Erato Records.

On Wednesday night, William Christie's period performance ensemble Les Arts Florissants returned to Lincoln Center. The occasion: a  concert performance of Platée, the astonishing comédie lyrique by Jean-Philippe Rameau that marks the birth of comic opera in France. The year was 1745.

Written for the comic sensibilities of the court of Louis XV, the comedy in Platée is both hilarious and somewhat repellent. It is the story of the god Jupiter, who dallies with the hideously ugly swamp-dwelling nymph Platée in order to convince his jealous wife Juno that he is actually faithful. In the end, Platée is spurned and outraged, laughed at by the assembled cast and chorus.

Opera Review: As the Walls Close In, a King is Made

Les Arts Florissants bring David et Jonathas to BAM.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jonathan (Ana Quintans, left) and David (Pascal Charbonneau)
greet the Israelites in a scene from David et Jonathas. 
Photo by Julieta Cervantes © 2013 BAM/Les Arts Florissants.

In 1979, the period performance group Les Arts Florissants took their name from an opera by French baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. This week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the ensemble, under the baton of its founder William Christie, presented another Charpentier gem, the biblical drama David et Jonathas. Written in 1688 and designed to be played in alternating acts with Saul (a play written by a French Jesuit) this is an example of tragedie-biblique, where a sacred story is treated in the style of early French opera.

Opera Review: Here Comes the Sun King

Les Arts Florissants revive Atys at BAM.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ed Lyon as Atys (kneeling) mourns the death of Sangaride (Emanuelle de Negri, foreground)
as Cybéle (Anna Reinhold) looks on. Photo by Stephanie Bamberger courtesy Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music opened their 2011 season with the welcome return of Les Arts Florissants, the period performance troupe specializing in French opera of the 1700s. The program: a revival of Atys, the wildly successful fourth opera of Jean-Baptiste Lully, court composer to Louis XIV.

The Super-Conductor Opera Preview Part II: The Pooh-Bah Edition

Brought to you by the Lord High Everything Else.

The Lord High Everything Else

Yes, we already published the annual Metropolitan Opera Preview.

It's in that box over there to the right, where we break down the coming season of high drama and music drama at the big limestone skyscraper-on-its-side on what used to be W. 64th St and Amsterdam Ave.

Here, we break down the rest of the coming opera season, from the New York City Opera on down to smaller (but beloved) regional companies in the outer boroughs. This schedule is not complete, and links go to the websites of the respective opera companies and venues.

Anyway, there's some really good stuff coming. Here we go!

September 2011:

• The opera season gets off to an early start with a run of Francesco Cavalli's Giasone at Le Poisson Rouge in the first week of September. 
• Les Arts Florissants revives their staging of Atys by Jean-Baptiste Lully, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, starting Sept. 18. William Christie conducts.

October:

• BAM starts the month off with a run of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera. Also, Tosca opens the 30th anniversary season of the Dicapo Opera, a charming "jewel box" house on the Upper East Side.
• The Amore Opera continues the tradition of chamber opera in the East Village with a "Fall Figaro Fest": Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia and the U.S. premiere of Mercadente's Il due Figaro, an unauthorized continuation of the adventures of the Almaviva clan, written in 1826.

Peter Maxwell-Davies.

November:

• Two exciting premieres this month: Juilliard launches their 2011 opera season with the U.S. premiere of Kommiltonen! by composer Peter Maxwell-Davies. 
• This month also features world premiere of Nico Muhly's opera Dark Sisters by the Gotham Chamber Opera. The new work will run for 10 performances at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College for Criminal Justice. 
• Angela Gheorghiu makes her one New York appearance of the season, as the Opera Orchestra of New York presents Adriana Lecouvrer at Carnegie Hall.
• Chelsea Opera offers Menotti's The Medium, and Brooklyn's Regina Opera presents Madama Butterfly.

December:

• Yale in New York mounts an annual concert series at Carnegie Hall. In the downstairs Zankel Hall, the company will perform William Walton's rarely played one-act opera The Bear. 
• The Dicapo Opera mounts Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. 

January 2012

• Wagnerians are already excited at the OONY's plans to mount a concert version of Rienzi at Avery Fisher Hall. Eve Queler conducts. Nice to have Wagner without spinning planks.
• Opera Lafayette, a period ensemble from Washington D.C. makes its annual visit with Le Roi et le Fermier by Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny. 
• Another Menotti opera. This time, it's The Consul, presented by the Dicapo Opera.
• The Bronx Opera presents a rare work by Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Poisoned Kiss. All performances are at Lehman College.

The death of vinyl: Janis Kelly in the Manchester premiere of Prima Donna.
Photo by Tristram Kenton.

February

• Claiming "all of New York" as its stage, the revamped New York City Opera opens at...BAM. The company will offer a Jonathan Miller staging of La Traviata (from their old partners at Glimmerglass Opera.) Also, the eagerly anticipated U.S. premiere of singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright's anticipated opera Prima Donna.
• The Met and Juilliard present a co-production of Armide featuring promising young Juilliard artists. This is a follow-up to last year's The Bartered Bride. Gluck's opera will be conducted by Jane Glover. This may be a tough ticket, as it is (probably) a sneak preview for an upcoming Met production.

Not Rigoletto: Charles Laughton (left) as Quasimodo
with Maureen O'Hara in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
© 1939 RKO Radio Pictures.

March

• City Opera moves again, to the Lynch Theater for a new production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. On a happier note, Dicapo Opera presents The Most Happy Fella, and the Regina Opera offers Cavalleria Rusticana, paired with a short concert. 
• Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra present a concert performance of Franz Schmidt's Notre-Dame, a rare setting of Victor Hugo's story of a love-struck hunchback. (Not Rigoletto. The other one.)
• Finally, OONY offers a TBA opera with Placído Domingo. Betting books will open before the announcement is made. Well, not really.

April

• As the Met's Ring creaks into high gear, Gotham Chamber Opera will present a rare Mozart work: Il Sogno di Scipione. At the Lynch Theater at John Jay.
• Dicapo pits their Violetta against the Met's with their own production of La Traviata. (No Ikea furniture is involved.) 
• Also, the Juilliard School mounts another staging of Don Giovanni. This one is by Stephen Wadsworth.

May

• In their final migration of the season, New York City Opera presents Telemann's Orpheus at El Museo de Barrio on the Upper East Side.
• The Bronx Opera winds down their season with Hansel und Gretel at Lehman College.

Opera Review: No Bunnies, Just Talent

Les Arts Florissants at Alice Tully Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Less is more: Les Arts Florissants music director William Christie.

As part of their 2010 BAM appearance, Les Arts Florissants staged Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen with elaborate costumes, sets, and bunny suits. For 2011, the French period ensemble offered two performances at Alice Tully Hall, as part of the TullyScope Festival designed to highlight the versatility of Lincoln Center's mid-sized concert hall.